How to Find Cheap Apartments in Seattle
Consistently rated as one of the best cities in the United States to live in and the largest city in the Pacific Northwest region, Seattle is a very popular place to live. As such rents tend to be higher than elsewhere in the region, but one can still find a cheap apartment with a little effort. Seattle is also a major corporate center in the United States and offers a lot more employment opportunities than many other cities, so there are a lot of small apartments meant for singles or couples that have moved to the area for employment purposes.
As is always the case, a simple Google search for “apartments in Seattle” pulls up dozens of apartment finder websites. However it is impossible to tell which – if any – of these have up to date information or are presenting the information in an unbiased way. After all, most apartment finder websites are for-profit entities that give priority to making money somehow as opposed to helping people find an apartment. Instead, it is usually better to go to the website of the local apartment association as they are likely to have current information and though it may not be complete, at the same time they have no vested interest in misdirecting apartment hunters as some of the independent sites do.
For Seattle and the surrounding area, the appropriate group is the Rental Housing Association of Puget Sound (RHA-PS, www.rha-ps.com). Under the subheading “Renter’s Resources” they offer a list of online resources meant to help people find apartments in and around the Seattle area. Most of these resources are independent of the RHA-PS, but if they list them it means the RHA-PS considers them at least somewhat reliable and doesn’t mind the association. Further this provides some idea of the most common online resources used in the Puget Sound area, which you can then explore at your leisure.
Another helpful online resource in Seattle is the Seattle Community Network (SCN, www.scn.org). This website also provides a wealth of links to both the local apartment associations and institutional resources, but also to various non-profits and charities helping with housing concerns in and around Seattle. Seattle has a well deserved reputation as being a very liberal city, so there are plenty of non-profits, charities, and non-governmental organizations working in the city to help people that need housing assistance.
The local government has also taken a very aggressive stance against homelessness and helping those in need of inexpensive housing. For example, in 2005 the King County government adopted the “Ten-Year Plan to End Homelessness”, which has put forth a major effort to provide permanent housing to people facing homelessness. Seattle is famous for its single-family housing zoning laws – which are designed to encourage reasonable accommodation – but has also aggressively worked to expand its basic housing availability with marked success. Despite the fact that homelessness is still an issue, Seattle has done a very good job of keeping its housing availability in line with its population increase.
Finding a cheap apartment in Seattle is not very difficult. The primary thing to keep in mind is transportation and your commute time. Assuming you have transportation options that meet your personal requirements, getting an apartment that works with it should not be too difficult.
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